Mark Price grew up in Seattle, Washington, and has been fascinated by art since high school, when he discovered ceramics and drawing as a powerful mode of expression and connection with something larger and beyond. As he explains, it was ‘not finding in the world around me a stage to play on, but a play to observe and rework in dreams and fantasy, discovering an inner and sexual life that needed art for its expression.’

After high school he studied art, and graduated in 1983 from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and printmaking. There he began to acquire the means to tell the story he felt he was meant to tell, and has since kept learning more and more how to paint the figure, first from a live model or photographs, and then from memory and imagination.

Mark Price’s art explores the importance and significance of both nakedness and queerness. ‘I want to make a naked art and a two-spirit art that explores the psychosexual side of artistic expression. Nakedness is both a symbol of honest expression and a very real psychological force that stands against shame, and proclaims itself for everybody’s mutual benefit despite conventional resistance against it. I also want to make art that goes to the other side of our gender divide, finding a new identity in synthesis. Homosexuality is the sexual expression of this, androgyny its artistic expression.’

Surrealism is very important to Price, and his imagery has been influenced by many surrealists and borderline surrealist artists such as Paul Delvaux, Odilon Redon, Leonor Fini, Jean Mammen, Gerda Wagener, Henry Scott Tuke and Sascha Schneider. The eagle-eyed will notice that some of the canvases are signed by Mo Potter; the precise relationship between the similarly-initially artists is a work in progress.

An early recognition of his work came when he won an award of merit and a cash prize in 1998 from the Peninsula Fine Center in Newport News, Virginia. He has since exhibited regularly, mostly in Maine and Virginia, and now lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

Mark Price’s (‘Mo Potter’) website can be found here.